A DOUBLE BILL:
Woody Allen / John Waters

by Les Phillips

SMALL TIME CROOKS

Woody Allen and the Zeitgeist parted company many years ago, perhaps at Manhattan, I think not later than Hannah and her Sisters. I guess he'll finish out his career making what are now small, idiosyncratic films for an aging subset of his early audience - those of us who weren't terminally offended by either Soon-Yi or Deconstructing Harry (I came close on the latter). I'm one of these loyalists. I disliked Celebrity, Sweet and Lowdown and Mighty Aphrodite, but found small pleasures in them. I very much enjoyed Everybody Says I Love You, liked Bullets Over Broadway more than that (especially Dianne Wiest), and admired Husbands and Wives thoroughly.

Small Time Crooks is a movie I'd place above films like Celebrity. It's slighter than anything he's done since Alice, but the only big mistake it makes is the casting of Allen himself. He's the center of the first half hour of the movie. Stanley Kauffmann has been complaining about Allen's acting for twenty-five years, and about twelve years ago he convinced me. Allen's character and performance accentuates all of the weariest bits of the Allen persona. I confess it - I'm tired of the shtick. The poor- shmucks-turn-rich humor is not fresh either; only Tracey Ullman's performance gives it even marginal interest.

But then Elaine May enters the picture - she gets not nearly enough screen time, and she's brilliant. (Am I the only one who suspects that they let her write her own dialogue?) And the comedy itself picks up speed near the end; it reminded me that Allen really is a seasoned veteran at this kind of thing. The word "well-made" springs to mind, and not as a pejorative. As the film let loose, I found myself enjoying it far more than I'd expected.

DIVINE TRASH

This is a documentary about John Waters, his early life and works, and his Dreamland stock company. I don't think it ever received wide distribution. Years ago I saw a different documentary, Divine Waters, shot for Italian TV. It was not very good except for the interviews with Waters' parents, a mild-mannered and proper couple who seem to have had infinite patience. (They loaned their son the money to make Pink Flamingos, which, of course, they have not seen and do not want to see.) The interviewers in that documentary thought it was daring to ask Divine whether or not he was gay.

Divine Trash, directed by Steve Yeager, is better than Divine Waters. The footage has been assembled from over a period of many years. There is an interview with David Lochary, who played Raymond Marvel in Pink Flamingos, and who died fifteen or twenty years ago, along with more contemporary interviews with Mink Stole. They interview not only Waters' parents and brother, but Divine's mother, the great Edith Massey, the Episcopal priest who allowed Waters to show Eat Your Makeup in his church basement, and even Mary Vara, the head of the Maryland Censorship Board, a woman who deserves her own documentary.

I had not realized that Eat Your Makeup, which may have been shown only once, is about Jackie Kennedy. But I've actually seen The Diane Linkletter Story, which may be available through some means, and I recommend it highly. It's about exactly what you think it's about.

The documentary focuses exclusively on the good old days - there is no reference to any film later than Desperate Living. It is charming to listen to Waters, Divine, Stole and other players reminisce about stealing the film needed to make Pink Flamingos, the numerous instances during the filming when they had to evade arrest, the $200 budget for sets ($100 of which was spent on buying a burnt out trailer which was then refurbished with stolen wood and tools; most of the other $100 was spent to burn it out again), the fact that no one on the set was ever completely sober (mostly lots of speed).

Highly recommended. And, if I'm not mistaken, none of the really gross scenes from the films are reproduced here, so it's safe for neophytes. I do wish they had found and interviewed the actress who played Sandy Sandstone.

CineScene, 2001